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Monday, 18 June 2012

'Blue Asylum' by Kathy Hepinstall

Release date: 10th April 2012

Published by: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

ISBN No: 978 0547712079

Amid the mayhem of the Civil War, Virginia plantation wife Iris Dunleavy is put
on trial and convicted of madness. It is the only reasonable explanation the
court can see for her willful behavior, so she is sent away to Sanibel Asylum to
be restored to a good, compliant woman. Iris knows, though, that her husband is
the true criminal; she is no lunatic, only guilty of disagreeing with him on
notions of justice, cruelty, and property. On this remote Florida island, cut
off by swamps and seas and military blockades, Iris meets a wonderful collection
of residents--some seemingly sane, some wrongly convinced they are crazy, some
charmingly odd, some dangerously unstable. Which of these is Ambrose Weller, the
war-haunted Confederate soldier whose memories terrorize him into wild fits that
can only be calmed by the color blue, but whose gentleness and dark eyes beckon
to Iris. The institution calls itself modern, but Iris is skeptical of its
methods, particularly the dreaded "water treatment." She must escape, but she
has found new hope and love with Ambrose. Can she take him with her? If they
make it out, will the war have left anything for them to make a life from, back
home?" Blue Asylum" is a vibrant, beautifully-imagined, absorbing story of the
lines we all cross between sanity and madness. It is also the tale of a spirited
woman, a wounded soldier, their impossible love, and the undeniable call of
freedom.